Mary Kay NSDs and Executive Level Income

One of my favorite phrases in Mary Kay Cosmetics is “executive level income.” The company and its representatives tout the ability to be self-employed while earning money like an executive. Even better is when women are lured in with the promise of making this income while being at home with the children.

But are women really making this executive level income in Mary Kay? Some are. But so few that it’s a nonsense concept to promote. Almost no one makes executive level income.

Even when a Mary Kay lady is making six figures, that’s just gross income. That’s not net income after all the business expenses. And when you factor that in, you see that the money left is embarrassing, especially when you consider that this is the top of the company and it takes 60 to 80 hours of work a week to earn this.

Let’s look at the VERY TOP of Mary Kay, the national sales directors. According to Mary Kay, there are currently 222 national sales directors. The company used to post the monthly commission checks of all the NSDs, but it got embarrassing for the company when these TOP women were getting small commission checks. Mary Kay started only printing commission amounts for the NSDs making $10,000 or more each month.

Below are screen shots of three random months from 2017. Look at how many NSDs made $10,000 or more. In February, there were 121. In May (when there is a big push for extra ordering for seminar year-end purposes), there were 168. In July, there were 115. If we average those three months, that’s 135 NSDs making $10,000 or more per month.

That means that 87 national sales directors – – the very pinnacle of success in Mary Kay – – are making less than $10,000 per month (or less than $120,000 gross income per year). You cannot in good conscience say that Mary Kay offers executive level earnings when 39% of the top people in the company aren’t even earning $120,000 before factoring in all of their business expenses.

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Stay at home mothers working 80 hours a week are not stay at home mothers. They are women who work long hours at home who just happen to be mothers too. In any business profile the one commonality of successful corporate people is that they work exceedingly long hours. That is the key to any successful person; either an at home worker or a corporate employee or partner.

The successful cosmetics entrepreneur may not have their cake and eat it too…so to speak… any more than any other driven worker. The advantage over the traditional entrepreneur or corporate staff or partner is these workers do not have to depend for their living upon recruiting others to do the work instead of them. Bonuses for corporate production still pay the producers a regular salary as the overlords enjoy their percentage rewards.

In Mary Kay, the producers must do all that work for free, while trying to recruit other servitude sellers as the overlords make money off of the subordinates’ labor and still must put in the grueling hours to keep the down line working for free and recruiting their subordinates to work for free in order to earn something…all the while cannibalizing each other for the same paltry few clients.

Thus Mary Kay is a voluntary servitude. There is no free money unless the labor is commensurate to the return.

I never left. The posts had not been coming automatically for a long time and they started up again. I was going to post about the LULAROE stuff, but decided not to because I don’t understand how anyone in their right mind would part with $5K to sling ugly stretchies at the world. Makeup is at least seductive. Ugly stretchies on big, Walmart shoppers’ touches’ is just stranger than fiction. But it also explains the last election. Go figure.

We moved to Fort Worth and then unexpectedly moved back to Washington, D.C. after a few years. Email me offline and we’ll get together. Have missed you too.

*Note: If your Director was requalifying or qualifying for a Cadillac in September and had a nervous look in her eye or asking everyone to “stretch”, she is doing base production or less. Anyone averaging well over the minimum isn’t running around tracking production day by day or asking people to push. It’s already in the bag for her, and she’s tracking much bigger things.

My former SSD is consistently in the top 100 in the sapphire division and makes Cadillac production easily. Even someone like her only grosses 100 grand a year and brags about it, never mentioning the extreme cost of doing business. I’m guessing she nets 60-70,000 a year. For a family of 5, that barely cuts it.

Let’s be accurate…..expenses come off first before calculating taxes and everyone in every job pays taxes. The kicker is that she will have to pay additional self employment tax on her net taxable income, after expenses, which those of us with jobs do not have to pay because our employers cover those.

Yes stay at home mom making executive income, what a crock. Why I allowed a trusted supervisor to suck me into this soul sucking pyramid scheme is beyond me. I was happy to retire from a great career to simply be at home caring for my children. When I met my SD, she creeped me out. When I met my NSD I saw a cold, narcissistic diva. My NSD was one of the chosen ones. She joined MK in the early 70’s. Even with that she went through hundreds of women in the USA/ Canada etc. She had and lost pink cars. Both my SD and NSD’s were cold as ice. It amazes me that any story would be written laughingly saying these women sell Make up products. Hahahaha…No what they actually do is recruit, recruit, recruit in their mlm cults. Maybe in the 70’s some products were sold. Nowadays NO one wants products from a company that has hurt women financially, emotionally and psychologically for decades. There is absolutely NO way to include children in a company where meetings etc. mostly happens in the evening and weekends. Stay at home moms: Stop, wait, be careful. MK will steal precious time and money from your family. MK is NOT ever worth the sacrifices.

“WATSEKA, IL—The congregation of Hope Methodist Church was on the verge of splitting Thursday as warring Avon and Mary Kay factions met for one final attempt at settling the deep disagreement over the superiority of each camp’s chosen denomination of multi-level marketing.”

Most retired NSDs have moved on to another MLM of some sort or another. Their retirements are not enough income to keep their lifestyles going. And the lower level ones retired with business debt. They pay taxes on their retirement income too, without the business deductions, so they’re scrambling to figure out their next steps.

Best truth ever! My NSD admitted she never used MK products. I remember commenting on her make up (it was beautiful) at an event and she said she had a professional make up artist that she used anytime she had an event. Everything on her face was MAC. I was stunned.